Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Wallerstein, Michael

Titel

Centralized Bargaining and Wage Restraint

Ist Teil von

• American journal of political science, 1990-11, Vol.34 (4), p.982-1004

Ort / Verlag

Austin, Tex: University of Texas Press

Erscheinungsjahr

1990

Quelle

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The literature on corporatism has presented much evidence associating highly centralized systems of collective bargaining with wage restraint and relatively successful macroeconomic performance. In addition, centralized bargaining is associated with relatively small wage differentials. This paper presents a model of the impact of centralized wage setting on both real wages and relative wages. The central assumption is that the centralization of wage setting at the national level unites unions who are complements in production. Since a wage increase for one group of workers negatively affects the welfare of other workers who are complements in production, centralized wage setters choose wages below the equilibrium of decentralized wage setting. It is also shown that if the union confederation maximizes a utilitarian welfare function with equal weights, centralized wage setting decreases wage dispersion. While low-paid workers clearly gain from centralized bargaining, high-paid workers may prefer that bargaining be decentralized.